


No More 'Sir'

by zoreta



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 22:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3093824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoreta/pseuds/zoreta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lost among the ruins of war-torn Republic City, Varrick and Zhu Li find themselves with only each other for company. Still transitioning from work partners to romantic partners, the elephant in the room can be ignored no longer: Zhu Li isn't his assistant, and Varrick isn't her boss. So what are they now? Well that's the question, isn't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	No More 'Sir'

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in approximately 8 years, and I’m aware I’m quite rusty. But I have jumped on the bandwagon of fics related to the final battle, and Varrick and Zhu Li taking advantage of time alone together to figure out exactly where they stand.

            The blast sent a shock through the hummingbird suit, as the single wing tried and failed to stabilize their flight. Zhu Li could feel her panic rising, but refused to let it overwhelm her. As the suit lurched directly toward a building, she realized that she had to get them out of the suit  _NOW_.

 

            “Hang on!” she called to Varrick below her, activating the ejection seats without waiting for a reply. She flew backwards and for a heartbeat feared that the damage from the spirit vine weapon had prevented Varrick’s escape, that just after they’d finally reunited she’d lose him again, but then he blasted out the back just a moment after she did. His scream of terror told her that he was, at least, alive.

 

            Her parachute’s deployment yanked her into the air; Zhu Li pressed the button to release her seat and saw it fall to down, down, down to the wreckage below. She was angled awkwardly and couldn’t see Varrick, but she had heard the  _whoosh_  of his chute’s deployment and was assured that he, too, was drifting downward. The winds whipped up by the explosion turned them to see what had become of the giant. It looked frozen in ice- the tiny figure of Korra at its feet told them what’d happened.

 

            “Varrick, how long do you think the ice will hold it?” Zhu Li yelled across the distance.

            “Not long enough if that other suit doesn’t get moving, those spirit vines pack one hell of a punch and we only have one more shot!” Varrick yelled back. They watched the giant struggle against their fellow saboteurs until they had descended too low to see it over the buildings.

            They landed a block away from each other, on top of the remains of a street. Zhu Li immediately freed herself from the cords and headed straight for Varrick’s landing zone, praying that he had landed safely- there was shrapnel and twisted metal everywhere. Visions of him skewered on the bones of a destroyed building flashed in her head as she ran toward the deflated parachute.

 

            “Sir! Where are you?!”

 

            The lack of an answer made her heart rise into her throat, had he landed in broken glass or on his head or worse?! She felt the familiar, cold mask clamp down on her. Panic would help nothing; she had to keep her head. She listened for anything that could be human- shuffling, yelling, anything. If Varrick was conscious, he wouldn’t keep silent about it for long.

 

            Then she heard it; a familiar frustrated grunt from the rubble pile partially covered by the parachute. A moving lump at the base of the pile gave away his location; she stubbornly ignored the worry growing in the back of her mind as she reached the small mound, grabbed the material and lifted it off of Varrick…

            Who was still strapped to his seat, his knees held snug to his chest. The bottom of the seat was thrashed, but had taken the brunt of the landing. If the seat had not protected him, his legs would have been shredded. Once the fabric no longer confined him he stretched out his legs and grabbed for the buckle holding him secure.

 

            “Are you injured?”

            “I’m fine I’m fine, but this darn thing’s jammed-“ Varrick struggled with the harness for a moment and was ready to resort to his teeth, but Zhu Li beat him to the release. Varrick started to babble about how the seats would need more testing and possible alterations, and Zhu Li had to remind herself she did not have a notebook to write in even if she wanted to, and ignored him to work at the button until at last he was freed.

 

            “Thanks” Varrick said after he’d gotten out of the seat and brushed off the dust coating his flight suit. Not that it did much good, since his hands were as filthy as the rest of him. Even his carefully styled hair was now turned a dull brown.

            “No problem sir”

            “and I thought we agreed no more ‘sir.’ We’re partners after all!” he chided.

 

            Zhu Li looked at her feet, embarrassed at her slip, as she felt her emotions rise to the surface again. Being asked to drop the professionalism that had shaped her relationship with Varrick for years, a precedent swiftly disappearing behind them, was still uncomfortably new. She gave a small shrug.

            “Sorry Varrick, old habit.”

 

            Varrick had expected a typically cold response or her particular brand of sarcasm, so her open admission caught him flat-footed. Instead of a large gesture of bravado or poking fun, all at once he went still and got that far away look in his eyes; it was a show of trust that he let the silence form as he thought instead of throwing up a smokescreen of empty words. As such, Zhu Li left the silence for him to break.

 

            “You know, even now that we’ve…” He made some vague gesture toward her hand.

            “Done the thing?”

            “I still catch myself thinking of you as my assistant. And my brain tells me I should expect that to take a while, but why should it?! You know how I hate waiting!”

 

            “I catch myself in the same trap,” Zhu Li replied. She leaned against him, glad that she could finally get away with it. In the past months she’d wondered what it would be like to have physical contact with Varrick that was not out of necessity, but comfort.

            “I wanted you to notice me for so long, and now that you do I don’t know how to feel. I kept my emotions tamped down because I never thought…” she looked to the bulge her ring made in her glove, the proof of a dream fulfilled she thought would never come true.

            “I guess we both have lot of changes to get used to,” she finished.

 

           

            The fact that they were both safe was still settling, and she felt a need to kiss her fiancé- to make it real. She wrapped her arms around his neck and stood on her toes to reach his lips, at the same time Varrick leaned down to reach hers- and with a sharp  _click_  their mouths collided. Varrick yanked his head back from the sting, and Zhu Li cringed at the ringing pain in her front teeth.

 

            Then she laughed. It was quiet and nasal, but it was the most beautiful laugh he’d ever heard because it’d come from  _Zhu Li_.

            “Do that again!”

            “…bang our teeth together?”

            “No, laugh! I’ve never heard you laugh before!”

            “Varrick, my laugh is awful, why would you want to hear it?”

            “Bullshit, your laugh’s great! You should laugh more!”

            “I don’t really like my laugh.”

            Varrick was ready to argue the point, but before he could reply another shot from the spirit cannon blasted through the skyline, leveling an entire row of buildings

            “Varrick, we need to get to cover.”

 

            On the other side of Varrick’s rubble pile was a building with minimal outer damage, though part of the roof had fallen away. It was the exact sort of building Kuvira would ignore- too tall to walk over without risking the giant losing its balance, too short to lift and throw easily.

            “There, that looks perfect! Zhu Li, do the thing.” She raised an eyebrow.  
            ”Zhu Li, will you help me do the thing?”

            She gave a nod and a peck to his cheek that gave him the beaming grin of success, and then they set out to find a way through the debris, hand-in-hand.

 

            Once a clear path was found, together they entered what looked to have been a bustling tea shop. The smell of jasmine still filled the air.

            Now most of the tables had been broken or overturned, and in one corner the roof had been shot off by the edge of the spirit beam, leaving a section open to the sky. Sunlight shone through the fractured roof, casting most of the room in shadow. Near the door a pair of chairs had survived, that were quickly set upright and placed opposite each other over a three-legged table. Zhu Li pulled his chair out for him before seating herself- a force of habit that he either didn’t notice or didn’t acknowledge.

 

            “Crying shame, this was one of the best tea shops in Republic City! I invented the Varri-tea right here!”

            “Varri-tea?” she would have remembered if Varrick had invented a tea- doubtless he would have made her brew it for him every morning.

            “That was just before you became my assistant! I had just arrived at Republic City, and a prospective business partner brought me here. I came up with a new brew on the spot, knew it would become a huge hit!” he waved his hands around, gesturing to parts of the room as if he could reconstruct the tea shop as it had been that day.

 

            “Of course my assistant didn’t agree, ran straight for the bathroom after one sip in fact! I asked him to try a second batch and he quit on the spot. Good thing too or else I wouldn’t have hired you! So it all worked out for the best.”

 

            Zhu Li saw an opportunity to confront what had festered in the back of her mind since her return. Varrick had never really apologized for his treatment of her, and she didn’t intend to step one foot down the aisle until he had.

 

            “Varrick, did you ever wonder why he quit?”  
  
            “Didn’t know a good thing when it came his way!”

            “Could it have been that, after he had one batch that made him ill, the first thing you did was try to make him try it again? Did you even apologize for what it did to him?”

            “Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever did.”

 

            She hadn’t thought so. It was no wonder so many assistants had come and gone before her- Varrick was a brilliant inventor and schemer, but had never understood how to properly clean up his own mistakes. That had always fallen to  _her_  to sort out.

            “Varrick,” her stern voice- a shade more urgent than her normal monotone- got his attention immediately.

 

            “I said I didn’t mean any of those things I said to Kuvira, and it’s true that I missed you and thought of you every day. When I thought you had died, I felt so  _lost._ But the truth is, the reason it was so easy to tell those things to Kuvira is that I  _did_ feel like you never appreciated me. I never felt valued as a person; you treated me like a  _cold heartless war machine_ that did whatever you told it to do, even the most horrible tasks. Kuvira appreciated me more in those few weeks than you had in five years.”

 

            Varrick’s eyes went wide and he reached across the table for her hands, which she allowed but did not move to meet him halfway. He was left awkwardly bent over the table, almost nose to nose with her.

            “But Zhu Li, I could never survive without you! When I was on the run I realized how much I relied on you, how much I needed you. Not just as an assistant, but as part of my life!”

            “Varrick, you never told me any of that. I did everything you asked and not once did you thank me for it. Once I did whatever you requested of me, I was dismissed,” she replied coolly, leaning back from him and setting her shoulders.

 

            “How was I supposed to know you felt that way? You never told me anything and I’m no good at when someone else’s  _upset_. That’s what I had you for!”

            She grabbed her hands back from him, and for the first time since she’d said ‘yes’ to his proposal, her expression turned frosty. Her glare was clear even in the dark room and he pulled back into his chair, abruptly remembering why he named a battleship after her.

 

            “That’s exactly the problem. You relied on me for everything but never told me so much as ‘thank you’ for doing EVERYTHING for you! You took me for granted until I wasn’t there for you to boss around!” She shoved herself away from the table, jumped to her feet, and marched to the sunlit corner. If she looked at his face right then she thought she might explode.

            Outside she could hear the sounds of battle being waged, though they sounded farther off than they had when they’d entered the tea shop. Perfect- the fate of nations was being decided just outside and she was stuck in a crumbling tea shop with Varrick being as impossible as ever. What’d really changed?

 

            From behind she could hear him pacing along the far wall, muttering under his breath so that she couldn’t understand him. And understanding was the whole problem, wasn’t it? She felt tears fighting to bubble up and closed her eyes tight, refusing to let them fall. She needed to stand her ground on this and couldn’t afford to cave, not when Varrick still didn’t understand the source of her anger. She had kept resentment bottled for years and now was  _not the time_  for it to express itself in tears, of all things. It had been easier when everything she felt toward him was locked tight- but now the floodgate had been opened.

 

            Then she felt a hand, gentler than she thought he was capable of, wiping at her eyes from behind her glasses. She’d been so occupied in trying to stave off the tears that she hadn’t even heard him approach. She wanted to lash out, to push him back and scream in his face, but if she was the kind of person to act on such impulses she would have never survived five years with Varrick. She opened her eyes to see him gazing at her tenderly, cupping her cheek in his hand. The sunlight made his eyes positively shine as she saw herself reflected in them.

 

            “You’re right. I did take you for granted. I didn’t realize how much I had leaned on you until you weren’t there, and I stumbled and fell right on my face. I know I’ve been a dick. Bolin’s convinced I was a dick as a way of avoiding my own emotions towards you, and for once the kid may have been right. All those times I could’ve made a move but I couldn’t get the balls together to do it.”

            “And I’m…” he gulped as if the words were incredibly bitter, “I’m sorry. You’re the greatest thing to ever happen to me and I was a fool not to realize it sooner, and even more of a fool to take so long to tell you. I love you, Zhu Li.” He looked so vulnerable, and she felt a desire to protect him, again and again for the rest of their lives. Her smile was wobbly, and would have been invisible to any stranger, but he knew her. He looked at her lips and leaned down, and she met him halfway, successfully this time. The kiss was soft yet passionate, intimate in the most innocent way. A promise.

            They pulled away and gazed softly into each other’s eyes.

 

            “Nobody else has stuck by my side very long. But you stuck with me, through prison and dictators and hiding for our lives in a platypus bear. I can’t promise that any of that will stop.”

            “I knew that when I agreed to marry you, sir.” Her eyes went wide at her mistake, but he just grinned and patted her on the back.

            “You’re right, we both have a lot of changes to get used to. But I know we can do it. Adaptable, you and I! No better team in the world!”

            “Team. I like the sound of that.”


End file.
